It hasn't been a stellar week for the education secretary.

Does anyone ever say, you know what, you've done a f***ing good job because everyone else

has sat on their f***s and done nothing, no signs of that, no?

In middle of a full-blown crisis, she spent much of the week on camera, swearing when

she thought an interview had ended, and then apologising for swearing.

And all the time insisting that the government has done a good job, even though schools

up and down the country are crumbling.

Now we've done a really good job, the department and everybody we've been working really hard

on this, we've done a really good job.

But the government hasn't done a good job on this, no government has for years and years

because that's how long warnings have existed about the risks of collapsing concrete

in public buildings, including schools.

It's been on the agenda for governments, so of different political persuasions for decades

now.

We were saying there's a critical risk to life if this programme is not funded, while

I was the permanent secretary in 2018, a concrete blog fell from the roof of a primary school,

so it wasn't just a risk, it was actually starting to happen.

But despite the evidence, the warnings were ignored, and the government took what's been

described as a sticking-plaster approach to fixing schools, but it's not the sort of problem

you can just wish away.

As the government is now learning, it's bound to return as an even bigger disaster.

Thousands of students are facing significant disruption at the start of the new term,

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